I think August ranks right up there with February as the official Worst Month Of The Calendar Year. There is just so little that is redeeming about it. Every day it is hot as shit — particularly so in the greater Palm Springs area — and without any holidays it marks the annual out-of-season peak in the casino I work at. So it’s slow, in other words, and money does not come as easily.
There is also something about the number 19 that I never fucked with. It’s prime (and thus not divisible by anything), and I always associate it with being a 19 year-old and being depressed for the first time. I still believe that every time something bad happens to me, or I feel a certain type of way, whether it be hopelessly pessimistic, or especially depressed for an extended period of time, in my mind and in my gut I always arrive back to my dorm room at Virginia Tech after my first love broke up with me and I was 3,000 miles from home.
I never actually knew if it was 3,000 miles from Southern California to the hills of Blacksburg VA, but that’s generally what I understood to be the distance from coast-to-coast when I was a little boy. Regardless: August sucks, and so does the number 19. Over the course of this month I have written like four separate blogs with the intention of posting each and all of them, but nothing materialized because they felt so drab and redundant and lacking in inspiration.
There are chapters to this blog representing the chapters of my years which have become the chapters of my life. More accurately, I’m not such a creative guy and decided a couple years ago that instead of coming up with some special title for each specific blog — pretentious or obvious alike — I’d just start counting. Because I am truly not a wordsmith but rather a math guy. Math is my jam and words kind of are but not so much as math.
What I mean to say is within all of these chapters, which are symbolized by all of these numbers, counting upwards, one-by-one, I know for certain that I am approaching midnight on this chapter in my life. One way or another it is about to end. I have been writing ad nauseam about a complicated sort of unrequited love I have been struggling to make work, and I have also been lamenting and paying homage to Niña whose memory is still a major part of my life and motivation.
You never realize how lost you are when you are in the thick of it. Some things can only be found when they aren’t there anymore. It’s one of the universe’s sickest tricks that it plays: That most people find love only when they stop looking for it, or that one catches the break they need only when they finally give up on hope. Maybe there really is something to the idea that having no expectations never leaves you disappointed.
A vague sense of confusion has cascaded over me for the better part of these last two years; that is ultimately how I will be forced to remember it. Confusion initially about why Niña decided to leave. Confusion thereafter on who I was supposed to be, and how I was supposed to act, having lost someone I never envisioned losing. Confusion about what sobriety meant, both for me and to me, and how long it was to last. Confusion about love. Confusion about if it really is as one-sided as it has sometimes felt, leading me to wonder if I’m simply delusional.
As much as I like to picture myself as a tough guy, like I’m just a cowboy doing my usual cowboy shit, this chapter made me confront how much it is I truly do care. I’ve never operated particularly well while having to face head-on my insecurities or vulnerabilities or, more generally, my emotions in any capacity whatsoever, and it was like an entire lifetime’s worth of it arrived on my doorstep in one fell swoop.
Simultaneously it is true, also, perhaps, that I really am as tough as I always thought. The optimist might argue such on my behalf. Because I have learned during this arduous chapter my own endurance, or ability to endure. I have cracked on many an occasion and I have fractured — and maybe I am just plain fractured for all I know — but never have I broken. I have not given up. I still have this weird feeling that not everything necessarily happens for a reason, and that not everything is meant to be, but that still I am here to win, and that whatever it is I imagine working out in my favor, or to my advantage, will be done.
That’s why I can’t fault my so-called unrequited love for denying me what it is I desire. Her road is blocked by a lacking of trust towards me, and if I were in her shoes it would be entirely ridiculous to bypass the reality that I am the furthest thing from trustworthy. In my heart I know who I am, and what I am, and that person is a one hundred percent genuine loyal trustworthy mutherfucker. But only I know that. No one else does and no one else has to.
Both collectively, and individually, we have this habit, or penchant — that’s the word — to expect others, all the time, to make the same decisions we do, or that we would, and typically we think they are stupid, or dumb, or crazy, when they do something differently. Gossip is a healthy human activity and it is built on these minor differences of action and/or opinion. We will never understand why others do the things they do, because we tend to project ourselves onto them. When we throw up our hands and say we don’t understand, what we are really asking is why they aren’t doing what we want them to do, or why they aren’t doing what benefits us.
I am willing to admit that I have (obviously) not done a good enough job to convince this unrequited love of mine to give me what I want. That’s what I’m most upset about: Not that she is making a poor decision — which she is, because only I know what’s in my head and in my heart — but rather that somewhere, at some time, I was fully capable at configuring together the perfect combination of words, or having a moment, even if for only an instant, to let her know that I was the fucking guy. It was there. It could have been. And it got away from me.
Now, for whatever it’s worth, it is imperative for me to hit the ground running when I do inevitably receive from her the bad news. I’m not pretending like it’ll be easy for me — for these matters of the heart have never been so casual or ordinary that I am allowed to have amnesia for all the strong feelings I’ve been carrying — but at the same time this is not my first rodeo, as they say. I can count on but a few fingers the women I have felt so strongly about and gone so far emotionally for, and each time the pain lessens. The pain lessens and the lifespan of the pain shortens. So I’ve got that going for me.
Because some forms of love, such as this, are capable of paralyzing a man. It makes it to where nothing else in the world exists or is of any consequence until first it is settled. Whether one is weak or strong, young or old, smart or smart not-so-much, each and all is victim. Each and all is humbled by this very specific and very rare type of love. Some are blessed enough to say they are able to count on as many fingers as I can how many times they have experienced it; many others are blessed to say they have found it once; but always the most blessed among us are those so ignorant to feel the bliss of never knowing it.
My own personal paralysis has been inflicted on every aspect of my life. I have lapsed on keeping tabs and having open communication with my family members — otherwise known as my best friends. I have grown depressed and thus lazy on executing such routine trips like going to the dentist (which I haven’t for a couple years), or seeing a doctor even though I need to. I have seen my regular friends at smaller and smaller intervals. Like I said: It’s everything.
So while it is true that I want nothing more than this girl to give me what I want, absolutely no part of it makes any fucking sense. It makes no sense why she would do a complete hundred-and-eighty-degree turnaround and decide, sure, why not, let’s roll the dice on this man who hasn’t done much of anything to ensure trust. It makes no sense why I would go from the most bachelor lifestyle imaginable to suddenly settling down and assuming both of her young children in hopes of eventually becoming their stepdad. It’s what I want, of course, but it doesn’t make any fucking sense.
What does make sense is for her to move on with her life, and for me to move on with mine. It makes sense to immediately schedule an appointment to see the dentist. It makes sense for me to see the doctor. It makes sense for me to speak more frequently to my mom and two brothers. It makes sense for me to go see them. It makes sense to stop pussy-footing around and actually go to law school instead of just reading books and pretending to comprehend them without any knowledge of their application. It makes sense to buy a house.
Only then will I be the man I picture myself as. Cowboys do not get paralyzed by love; they do what is necessary and worry about love at a much later date. They do what they want. They shoot first and they ask questions later. They make love a one-sided agreement, only they do it from the opposite direction than what I have been doing during this chapter of life. You can fall in love with me. You can think I am really something. But I gotta go, baby. I gotta go over yonder, where the grass is always greener.
That’s where you can find me. I’ll be there waiting.
Future Bets 
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